The Critical Study of Non-Religion: Discourse, Identification and Locality

Description

This book acts as a bridge between two increasingly entrenched positions in contemporary religious studies—one that is interested in understanding ‘religion in the real world’, and the other in understanding the discursive processes by which that statement makes sense, or ‘critical religion.’ Chris Cotter argues that both have a lot to learn from each other, and that rigorous empirical work can be conducted under the religion/non-religion binary and still contribute to the critical project. This book presents a concise and up-to-date critical survey of research on non-religion in the UK and beyond, before presenting the results of extensive research in Edinburgh’s Southside which blurs the boundary between ‘religion’ and ‘non-religion’. In doing so, the author demonstrates that these are dynamic subject positions, and phenomena can occupy both at the same time, or neither, depending on who is doing the positioning, and what issues are at stake. This book details an approach which avoids constructing ‘religion’ as in some way unique, whilst also fully incorporating ‘non-religious’ subject positions into religious studies. It provides a rich engagement with a wide variety of theoretical material, rooted in empirical data, which will be of interest to those interested in critical, sociological and anthropological study of the contemporary non-/religious landscape. Cover Contents List of illustrations Acknowledgements Introduction 1 The contemporary non-religious landscape in the UK and beyond 2 Critical religion, critical non-religion 3 Approaching non-religion: Edinburgh, the Southside and the religion-related field 4 Discursive entanglements: The religion-related field in Edinburgh’s Southside 5 Religion and non-religion as acts of identification 6 Local particularity 7 The power of indifference Epilogue: There is no data for non-religion Appendix 1: 2014 interviewee demographics Appendix 2: 2014 interview schedule Notes References Index